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Honestly, I think that with as different as it is, and with as many new features as it is, some people will make the switch gradually.

Think about designers and interactive designers/developers using Flash at their job, working daily on sites, client work, banners, etc. "being very busy." They can't just immediatly kiss it goodbye and have the same workflow on a new and very different version.

For that reason, I think if you were to know what's going on at design agencies across the world, they're all not going to make an instant 100% switch.

F4 to F5 = big step, tons of changes
F5 to FMX = small step, lots of improvements, addins to things that already exist, the timeline is better, layering is improved with the new feature 'Layer Folders'! Lots of little useful changes like that as well as new features, tools, etc, etc... oh and components are soooo sweet! Watch when they take over the Flash Exchange ;-)

CNO, yes.

I'm actually authoring a Flash 4 compatible movie right now because it still has greater saturation than F5 plugin for this piece's target audience. But, the interface enhancements and CD-ROM possibilities of FMX are certainly worth jumping on. And, hey, I will still be able to export to F4 if I need to.

|re: fmx|
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wow. to start off, i hated each and every upgrade of flash. it seemed so pacific, so very content with itself that i thought it was the best thing in the whole world. apparently, macromedia didn't think so

as far as i can see it, kids, macromedia has just cornered itself. macromedia flash 7 is NOT coming out. in the long run, you can kiss flash goodbye. but its legacy will fade for over 20 years and different (and better) apps will try to fill its niche. all macromedia can do now is integrate its authoring tools into one all-purpose swiss army knife. flash has finally become the EXPERIMENTAL - H4X0R L337 thing that macromedia meant it to be. its box is gray, for pete's sake! next think you know, it'll be distributed in little pills smushed onto a souped up floppy disk with a laser beam for retina recognition.
why people will switch is a question i do not dare to answer because frankly, there isn't reason enough. developers are happy as it is with their generator-loaded .jpgs. i'm still developing advanced applications with FLASH 4, though i find flash 5 an awesome tool for interface prototyping. flash drifted so far from its animation purpose. macromind and authorware(the other company?) weren't betting on some screwy gadgety bill-gates/steve-jobs/steven-hawking/some-genius-kid tool as the savior for web presentation. an app advances bilaterally, advancing in both directions. the graphic abilities of fmx are a 5, the scripting abilities are a 9. the only thing preventing this tool from becoming its own programming language is its name. its imbalance is what drives people off course. i'm definitely not switching to fmx until i create my own application, because if macromedia wants to create a compelling app, they've gotta create the thing right the first time, but if they want to go to 2G, let 'em come up with a good name.
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[Edited by aevium on 03-08-2002 at 05:45 PM]

Originally posted by aevium wow. to start off, i hated each and every upgrade of flash. it seemed so pacific, so very content with itself that i thought it was the best thing in the whole world ...yaddayaddayadda .... wants to create a compelling app, they've gotta create the thing right the first time, but if they want to go to 2G, let 'em come up with a good name.

uh...what?

So by making a product better, they are shooting themselves in the foot? Don't guess I understand that line of thinking.

what i meant to say was that macromedia is hanging the whole flash thing by its neck from a tall tree. another version of flash, the noose is tightened, and flash is integrated into a suite. photoshop used to be an independent app, then it got integrated into dozens of "packs." flash will not die, it will advance to 3G or 4G, but it won't have the same independence and sense of freedom, because it kills its own purpose of being graphic.

to put it simply, long-term suicide for Flash is coming, and if a MM rep tells me i'm wrong, i'll rent a crystal ball, because like it or not, flash is dying.
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Aevium as far as i can see you havent made a single valid point :P Youre like me, you have an idea and you wish to express it but in the end you end up covering the whole genre rather than the single project you intended to discuss. Hell you might even start discussing politics.

I honestly cant see the "death of flash" coming anytime soon. People are humans, they like shiny things with knobs on them, and as long as there is a moderatly simple way of giving them that with low loading times then i think we can guarantee its popularity for a while ahead.

Flash 5 was dying, mainly because of how bug-ridden it was, how slow advanced vector anim was with regards to the average household computer and how many polished Shockwave products arrived in very little time. It became a cheap quick solution for people who would do stuff for fun and nothing more. Newgrounds anyone? As a result flash was earmarked as unprofessional and low tech. Youd be hard pressed to get a job as a dedicated flash developer these days, at least here in norway. Its considered a "bonus" in hiring an employee more than a real skill.

I've worked on/off with flash game development for close to 2 years now, and i've been quite literally tearing my hair out at how utterly chaotic the development process would tend to get. I signed up for a Shockwave class but eventually couldnt afford it, so i stuck with flash. Now with Flash MX, which deals with pretty much all the problems ive had with Flash 5 (Layer folders people whahaha woho!) i honestly believe we can see a form of rebirth in the flash community. With the greater ease of the development process along with the additional power offered by most computers there days, the improved AC and the new player (runs amazingly smooth compared to the old),i think we'll be seeing a lot more professional content the coming years.

Flash is not dieing.
To kill Flash you must kill the army of developers using the software and there is no way that will happen.

Your saying Flash has now got to the point to where there is nothing to add... animation and actionscript is now top notch. First of all, This is a good thing... Flash MX is top notch which mean it's now ok to extend on the program not to leave it where it is. Think about it, there are several things not in Flash. Flash can not handle 3d like director, Flash can not do several things and has a huge wish list of new features that can be added. I feel the NEXT version of Flash after Flash MX is going to be beyond crazy. I can not even envision the direction in which Flash is going to take within the next year.

|re:follow-up|
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f5bt, i must disagree. flash could be killed by a budget cut (UNlikely), natural disaster (UNlikely) or shortage of users (much likely). people do like things with shiny knobs, but soon, those things become boring and monotonous. flash IS going to die quite soon, but its product line is not. perhaps it will be called another name or integrated in a suite, or even sold to a neophyte developer company.
flash, by far, is not considered anywhere NEAR low-tech. applications developed with flash could surpass the billions of lines of code that make up windows xp. bugs are not an issue. for f5, i work on a mac, for f4 i work on a pc. both have substantial system resource consummation, but neither in my opinion is low-tech. a barely-changed interface and a new box for fmx is like ie5 to ie6. there are advancements, from big to small. but there isn't much to hold it in place. people like yugop don't need a High-tech version of flash. they're already as high-tech as can be. compare flash to netscape. it was a pioneer, advancing over a long period of time, but now it became a background app. so has flash. why? because flash was used SO much that people became deathly tired of it.
fmx will keep coming for fmx2 and 3. but i am afraid that its status will diminish.
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